On Being: A Scientist's Exploration of the Great Questions of Existence

Atkins, Peter

ISBN 10: 0199603367 / ISBN 13: 9780199603367

Published by Oxford University Press, 2011

About this Item

This is a used book. It may contain highlighting/underlining and/or the book may show heavier signs of wear . It may also be ex-library or without dustjacket. This is a used book. It may contain highlighting/underlining and/or the book may show heavier signs of wear . It may also be ex-library or without dustjacket.

Seller Inventory # mon0000555689

Bibliographic Details

• Title: On Being: A Scientist's Exploration of the Great Questions of Existence
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication Date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0199603367
• ISBN 13: 9780199603367
• Binding: hardcover
• Condition: Acceptable
• Dust Jacket Condition: Includes dust jacket.

About this title

Synopsis

Peter Atkins is the shining exception to the rule that scientists make poor writers. A Fellow at Oxford and a leading chemist, he has won admiration for his precise, lucid, and yet rigorous explanations of science. Now he turns his forensic mind to the greatest--and most controversial--questions of human existence: birth, death, the origin of reality, and its end.

In On Being, Atkins makes a provocative contribution to the great debate between religion and science. Atkins makes his position clear from the very first sentence: "The scientific method can shed light on every and any concept, even those that have troubled humans since the earliest stirrings of consciousness," he writes. He takes a materialist approach to the great questions of being that have inspired myth and religion, seeking to "dispel their mystery without diminishing their grandeur." In placing scientific knowledge in such cosmic perspective, he takes us on an often dizzying tour of existence. For example, he argues that "the substrate of existence is nothing at all." The total electrical charge of the universe, among other things, must be nothing--zero--he writes, or else the universe would have blasted itself apart. "Charge was not created at the creation: electrical Nothing separated into equal and opposite charges." He explores breathtaking questions--asking the purpose of the universe--with wit and learning, touching on Sanskrit scriptures and John Updike along the way.

About the Author

Peter Atkins is Fellow of Lincoln College, University of Oxford. A leading chemist and writer of widely adopted textbooks, he is the author of Galileo's Finger and Four Laws, among other works.